My man is a stud.  He fights off slithery serpents in his spare time. But truth be told that although the right side of my brain revels in how masculine he is for escaping death by poison, the left side gets a tad freaked out.

He came home after a ride last week and enthusiastically told me that a Black Mamba launched itself at him whilst riding up one of the valley passes. I didn’t know if I was to respond with quite the same level of enthusiasm or to just turn a lighter shade of bird poo and then faint ungracefully onto the floor. I did neither. I responded with one of those incredulous-type tones reserved for mothers who’ve just discovered that their 3 year-olds can swear.  “A wha, what, WHAT attacked you? What did you say?”

“Yuh, I saw it sitting there and as I rode past, it obviously got a little irritated and all of a sudden it launched itself at me.” He said delightedly.

“And then what, what did you do hunni?” I interrupted.

“I just felt my heart beat faster and my lungs fill with more oxygen, I cycled faster and managed to escape those fangs from piercing my skin and leaving me mortally wounded…all alone in the middle of nowhere..forever”

I love dramatizing the scene, so no he didn’t really say that – It was more like:

Superjerm: “I just felt the adrenaline and did a quick bike sprint, but it was close.”

Me: “Yup, no big deal really, you almost just got killed by a snake, but you didn’t, great stuff.”

Oh my shattered nerves!

He’s a solitary creature this man of mine, he loves riding in the rugged and humid valley of 1000 hills all on his own and I suppose I would too if I was brave enough. A stones throw from our house, the valley descends hundreds of metres down to the Umsindusi and Umgeni Rivers below. It’s a peaceful place where you can soul-search amidst nature. It was our playground for Cape Epic training and now it’s Jem’s turf for TransAlp fine-tuning and of course, for fending off creatures of the wild.

Superjerm 1 – Black Mamba 0